Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)

I am concerned about primary legislation not being prescriptive. As the Minister is aware, a report was published by the Joint Committee on European Scrutiny that indicated 75% of legislation in any given year was implemented by way of statutory instruments signed by Ministers to give effect to EU law and often to amend legislation where that power had been given to the Minister under primary legislation. The concern in this regard is that there is no scrutiny. Under the Government committees have been given the power to scrutinise EU legislation, but there is no power in the case of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade which has been told statutory instruments will be passed to it at the same time as they are passed to the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, meaning they will already have taken effect; therefore, changes to primary legislation are made without the approval or knowledge of Members of the Oireachtas. If 25% of legislation in a given year is debated by the 226 Members of the Oireachtas and 75% is implemented by way of statutory instrument, primary legislation must be more prescriptive because there is no mechanism for Members to scrutinise statutory instruments until after the fact when we are told committee members will receive copies of statutory instruments at the same time as the public. This makes me wonder about the reason primary legislation should not be more prescriptive. I accept the Minister's contention that concepts are changing and that my amendment may be too prescriptive. My fear is that statutory instruments are used to regulate in all legislation. Once we make the law, the Minister is all powerful, as he can use the process of statutory instruments to add or subtract from a list of schemes and the methods of conserving energy will never by scrutinised by anybody in this House. There are no checks and balances.